"HELL yeah!"

Alphys squeaked, giving a small jump. Just as the other Alphys was settling on a chair downstairs and pulling out her smartphone (was she just going to hang out here the whole time?) Undyne pumped her fists in the air, a big toothy smile on her face, and something didn't seem right here. Alphys quickly let go of Undyne's arm, rubbing her palm on her coat, and then put her hands on her hips. "Uh, hell yeah?"

Undyne's good eye flickered back her way, that grin not lessening. "Oh I mean, this could be fun! I've never sparred with myself before, never got a chance to straight-up duel me either."

"I mean... right... but..." Alphys tapped her claws together, and to give her hands something to do she retrieved her phone from her pocket and thought about texting somebody.

Frisk was never very good about answering texts, though. They only liked to use their phone for talking... but talking on the phone was so awful? She hated it? What was wrong with text messages? "Um..." what was she going to say? She didn't know even when she started on this sentence. "..." Oh, that was it. That was the end of the sentence. She was done apparently.

Alphys chewed on the inside of her mouth.

"I wonder if I can get her contact info before the fight," Undyne was saying, after patiently waiting for that sentence that just trailed off to finish trailing. She mimicked Alphys' example and pulled out her phone, smiling big. "Pick a place, date, time..."

"Oh! But!" NO she had it now. "What if it's n-not... like sparring? Like, what if she wants to take you on just to h-hurt you?"

Undyne's eyebrows raised. "Hurt me? Why? I've barely said like two words to her." At that, Alphys stuck her tongue in her cheek and made a shrugging gesture, as if she shouldn't guess even though she actually had an idea.

Seeing that, Undyne snorted and laughed. "I mean, I know that the monsters in that other world can be pretty aggressive. I still gotta find a way to get back at that 'Red Sans' for the MESS he and his Frisk made in New Home." She cracked her fist against her palm. "I guess if she really wants to go all out, that's what's gonna happen. I'm not gonna just run away like a coward or something."

The damage that had been done to New Home while the "Red" monsters were here wasn't extensive, but all the cracked buildings had been a pain to fix. But it could have been worse. Alphys considered that, if Undyne had known at the time that Red Sans had forcefully traded places with their own Sans to stay here, she would have reduced him to mere dust on the ground.

"Iiiiii just, don't like the sound of it is all. Thosemonstersarekindofcreepyit'slikethere'ssomethingwrongwiththem-" The last words came out in a tiny rush, Alphys lowering her voice in case the Red Alphys heard her.

Scooping up and throwing away a wrapper that had missed the trash can (Alphys had been intending to get to it sometime) Undyne didn't answer her. "Speaking of that..." Rather, she called out to the Red Alphys directly, "Hey! Dizzyface! You gonna stick around all day or what?"

Red Alphys jumped, and she glared ruefully up at them both. "N-no! I just!" She looked back at her phone, her expression softening. "Th th this wifi, it's. Th thi this is... you can get onto human websites from here."

"It's an update from the undernet," said Alphys, pushing up on her glasses with as much authority as she could muster. "S-since we live in such proximity to-to humans we um, have the same wifi now."

"We we we we don't have any internet," Red Alphys said, scrolling wistfully through her phone. Her glasses slipped down on her face, revealing bloodshot and baggy eyes. "We uh we, we left it behind underground when-when Frisk..."

Undyne put her hands on her hips. "Woah, really, no wifi or wifu?"

"Nowaifueither," Alphys said under her breath, and Undyne started laughing.

In the next moment she added, "No I mean, I'm sorry, that sucks! You should ask the humans to loan you theirs."

She gave a glance towards regular Alphys, as if trying to see if their previous conversation was over. Alphys didn't respond to her look; Undyne was the one that called out to Red Alphys, after all... So. So. Apparently that meant their conversation was over. Undyne vaulted over the second floor railing and onto the first floor, landing with a sharp crack! that made both Alphyses jump.

The floor looked okay at least.

But Red Alphys just snorted dismissively. "Can't."

"Well if they won't give it to you for free, just beat the hell out of some of them. That's your guys's thing, right?"

"N-no-I mean-th-that-ugh!" Red Alphys rubbed her face. "Th-th-the humans don't even know that we we exist but go off I guess."

"Huh? But you're on the surface now," said the regular Alphys. She took the down escalator.

"It it it doesn't matter." This supremely tired looking monster expelled a breath. "We we haven't t-tried to approach them yet. Th th the king wants us to wait. Sssssince we d-don't have an ambassador to t-talk to them for us."

Red Sans and Red Papyrus, and Red Frisk especially, had popped over to visit a couple of times since their worlds had become aware of each other. On none of those occasions had they mentioned how things went when the monsters were let up onto the surface. It had seemed rude to ask, at least to Alphys. And even more important, she didn't really want to ask a question she was afraid to hear the answer to.

But now she was wishing that she had, like the many other things she wished she'd done long after it was time to do them. "Um..." God her throat was so dry suddenly. "Frisk didn't want to do it?"

Red Alphys shook her head. Undyne's lip curled and her confused frown turned into a scowl; Alphys could guess what she was thinking, but she didn't say anything.

"Literalscum," Red Alphys hissed to herself.

And that didn't seem right, but Alphys didn't know enough about Red Frisk to want to dispute it. Or did she? She knew what she'd seen Papyrus say about them on the internet, and she knew what the people in the Red World were like, especially with that version of her right there, so she could make an education assumption about why Red Frisk might not have... but they might get mad at her, or tell her more information she somehow missed.

So an awkward silence just hung heavy between the three of them in the lab, until finally Undyne pulled out her phone. "Hey, do you have your Undyne's number by chance?"

"No I don't." The Red Alphys was already returning her gaze to her phone, a sickly curved smile growing her face as she flipped through internet tabs and scrolled across social media sites. "Nnnnot anymore."

"Aw man. Oh well, guess I'm gonna do a couple extra laps just in case. I was feeling kinda funny before."

So saying, Undyne gave a wave to Alphys (that she took too long to wave back to gaaahh,) and then went on her way out from the lab, stopping once to clear her throat hard.

She was so hot. Stepping into the sun like that, her fishy skin sparkling.

Alphys gave a little sigh, and of course Red Alphys was staring at her.

Oh my god, Alphys suddenly realized, she left me all alone with her. She left me all alone with this weird kind-of-clone of me and I have no idea what to say oh my god.

She'd offer her a snack, but she was loathe to leave more wrappers lying around. Alphys cleared her throat, and Red Alphys looked back up. "L-listen, um, do you have any idea when your Undyne will be... getting here?"

For the first time the other one's sour expression changed. Whether it was positive or negative was hard to tell with those thick dirty glasses, though. "As soon as she knows she can. Which, which which which she doesn't. Me and Sans told her that the machine was on the fritz, again, but I could let her know that that that it works now." She rubbed her face. "Maybe she'd l-l-like that? Maybe I could tell her that, that I fixed it? Specifically? For her?"

"You, um, seem to do a lot of lying to her."

At that, Red Alphys looked away and made a soft gulp, turning her eyes back to her smartphone as if Alphys were looking with the most judgmental expression ever. Well... "I'm, uh," she tried again. "I'm not trying to uh, judge you or anything. And this is based more on, other stuff that you said, before, uh... When me and Undyne... er, before we were dating, I did that a lot too. E-even more than I, do now, haha, causeit'sactuallyahardhabittobreak." Although it wasn't anything serious anymore, like... what she did to all those old Fallen Down monsters, or how much of a loser she really was and all the lies she'd told to make herself sound cooler.

Now it was just little things. Like, yeah she did her training today, or yeah she did the laundry, or yeah she was eating something other than cup ramen for dinner. Little things over the phone or over texts. So she wouldn't get worried, or so she wouldn't get frustrated and think that Alphys was putting all that hard work she did with Papyrus to waste. Even if sometimes she kinda was.

What was her point again?

"Just... it's gotta s-stop. Or, s-sort of stop, so at least you're not telling her big ones? D-did you ever... did she find out about the... thing with the... amalga-"

"Of course she knows about that! Frisk blabbed it all over town!" Red Alphys cut in with a huge gasp of breath.

Blink. With her invisible eyelid so it wasn't actually noticeable, but still. "Okay, w-well, then. Do you have any other b-big secrets that you're keeping from heruh you also don't have to uhh t-tell me what they are if you don't want to."

The answer was apparently yes. "I... Keeping secrets isn't the problem!" snapped Red Alphys.

But even as she glared, this was one area that Alphys was over 65% confident in and so, hands clasped, she replied, "B-but telling lies is a problem. And y-you two already seem so distant... m-making even more distance seems... like a bad idea?"

"I'm not the one making distance!"

Alphys stuck her tongue in the side of her mouth and shrugged. There were more things she could say, but... but what? "But, well, if she already isn't interested, she might not take it really well if she finds out the things you lied about, t-too..."

Much to her relief, Red Alphys didn't protest anymore after that. In fact, she hopped right up off the chair and closed her phone. When she spoke, though, her voice was already drifting. "Whatever. Everything went really differently for you. Even, even, even even your Frisk, even the humans here are-are different I bet. I, I should get back. Thanks for wasting my time. I'll go... just go conduct more research back home."

As her sore-throated counterpart waddled to the door, head ducked down at level with her body like a rat, Alphys tentatively called out, "Uh. Well have a good time, then."

(Maybe that research would involve something actually good and not those pulpy brainless superhero movies that Red Frisk started telling them all about once.)

Alphys waited until she was the only one left in the lab.

And then, with a big inhale, she started texting Frisk.

Author's Note: Mmmmm convos.

Sorry guys ;-; been having a hard time with this fic.

I lost my old inspiration on it so I'm tryin to find a new one.

Next Chapter: Picking Cherries